Final Video

This is the completely edited opening sequence that we did, and the difference between this and our first draft was the titles. After doing a little bit of research on a few thriller movies we thought that it would be best to have the cast and crew's names on-screen, and that is exactly what we did. To make sure this was the right thing to do we even asked a few people, and they agreed that what we did makes it look more 'professional' overall.

And here is the opening sequence from Insomnia, which was our main inspiration:

Evaluation

Evaluation on Prezi

Timeline

This is a timeline I made that follows the process of our journey into making our final media product. Looking back it now occurs to me that we could have finished edited a lot quicker, but we were new to iMovie and we were trying our best to understand how everything works. The timeline is below:

Plot

In Hounslow Amritpal Theliwali is a young hardworking school boy however unlike most school boys in London Amritpal lives a hard life. His dad is a drug dealer who is now wanted by a lot of gangs in Hounslow. Amritpal’s mother suffered from domestic violence she was then thrown down the stairs she was then in a coma, Amritpal cared for her up until he was 8 when she passed away. Amritpal’s dad has escaped and is now hiding in Canada. Amritpal is now in Hounslow all alone with a high chance of him being killed. Amritpal didn’t understand the severity of the situation as he didn’t know what his father had been up too. Amritpal discovered a letter that had been left by his dad which told him about what is going on, it said him that people may not know that he is his son, it also stated that there was 100k hidden in the attic and a further 200k buried under the lawn. At the start of the film Amritpal has not yet discovered the letter and so just like any other day he starts his long journey to school, he lives far away from school as there was too much threat living in the Hounslow area, he gets to school, completes his school day and starts his long journey back. On his way home, Amritpal gets stalked and chased by a hit man that was ordered by some gang members luckily he manages to escape him and gets onto the train and goes home, the gang hit man’s name is Amir Jaffer he is now waiting at Amritpal’s at the top of Amritpal's road Amritpal is chased and hit with the bat, this was nightmare. Amritpal then sees the letter that his dad left and over the next few days Amritpal has a blast as he sees the money; however the next day he relives his nightmare he gets captured and tortured. And Amritpal's best friend Harvey, who is like a brother, gets shot in front of his own eyes by Amir. He finds the next few days hard and stays at his other best friend Tanya’s house. Now he sets off to look for Amir, when he finds him he talks to him and finds out the reason for his death he is told that his dad killed there dad and so they wanted payback, amrit chocked him to death. At night Amritpal lies and reminisces about how horrible his dad was and how many families’s he destroyed. He decided to go and find his dad to confront him about why he was so horrible to people. He and Tanya have sexual intercourse the night before leaves. The next day he goes to Heathrow airport straight to Vancouver, he stays and looks for his dad and whilst searching receives a firearm for an old friend of his. On the 3^rd day he receives a voice mail form he uncle saying that his father is living with him and don’t be afraid to give him a call. Amritpal gets a call from Tanya and finds out that she’s pregnant he then finds out his address and visits them the next day. He then tries to sympathise with his dad and tells him that he is going to be a grandfather, as he is intoxicated with drugs and alcohol he reacts in a different manner as to what Amritpal would of expected and calls this baby a mistake and a burden to this family, Amritpal out of rage and anxiety reacts in hitting his dad. His dad then starts to laugh and exclaims about how he was a mistake and how great it was for him to throw his mother down the stair for a fatal coma, Amritpal’s uncle, over hears this conversation. However, Amritpal reacts in a manner, in which the rage he built up had finally come out, he stood his dad up; and put in a fire arm into his mouth. His eyes flickered with rage and as his father cried for help, his uncle tried rebelling against Amritpal, but it was too late Amritpal had killed his father Amritpal spent the rest of his life living in Canada raising his family.

Finished Video

Here is the our final media product:



It did take a long time to edit, however I feel that it was all necessary and part of the learning process. The filming was mainly done by Balkaran and Tanveer, the music and sound was done by Amir, and the editing was done by Tanveer and I. Overall I think we have come a long way from the start, and we did try and use as many conventions as we could.

Evidence

Here is a screenshot of the music being made:

And here is a screenshot of the editing process:

This is just to track our progress, although no other screen shots have been taken or are going to be taken in the future.

Visual Mind Map

This is a visual mind map just to show the conventions of a thriller film. The images in them are stills from the movies that I researched when choosing the cast. It basically summarises what thriller movies are expected to be like, and they

Filming Schedule

This is our filming schedule with every single thing we shot, including scenes that were later deleted in post production due to time contraints. I believe the whole group did very well with the timing as we managed to get all the filming done as soon as we could, meaning we could spend longer on editing.

Location shots

Here are some pictures of the locations that we filmed in:

Osterley Park

Osterley Subway 

Hounslow West Station 

Hatton Cross Station (inside)

Undeground Train Interior 

Osterley Station 

Hatton Cross Station 

Train (at Osterley Station) 

The reason we filmed in these locations was because we planned it all out before and wanted all these places to be relatively close to each other. Also, filming was done on separate days as we wanted the lighting to be consistent, and we also encountered a few problems like the fact that our school has a uniform and in the video the main character was wearing casual clothing. Because of this we had to film the school scenes during our media lessons and make sure the lighting was pretty much the same to avoid any continuity errors. Everything didn't go as planned, but I believe we tried our best and in the end it turned out fine. Now all that needs to be done really is the editing.

The Filming Process

Filming today was a very long process and everything didn't go as planned, but I believe it turned out better than expected in the end really. The four people in my group and our actor all met up at 9:30am with our prop (the baseball bat) and started planning out our day. After a small discussion we decided to make our way to Hounslow West station to begin our filming and when we got there we were actually quite lucky that it wasn't as busy as it usually was, and this is because we chose to film in our holidays. After we decided which angles and camera shots we were going to use we started filming straight away, although we did have to explain what we were doing to the train station supervisor after he asked us.
After filming the main character walking downstairs we had to film him actually getting on the train and we decided that he and one member of our group would get onto the train but come back as soon as they get off. Amir, Tanveer and I were left waiting and after a while decided to go on the train to the next stop as we thought that they might be waiting there. Because we were underground the phone lost it's connection which made it a lot harder than it would have been otherwise. After a while we finally all got back together at Hounslow West station and planned out what we were going to do after that. We all decided it would be best to film all the train scenes first and then once we left we wouldn't have to come back. After coming up with that plan we all got on the train and filmed a bit before getting stopped by a few police officers that happened to be on the train. They told us we couldn't film on the trains unless we got permission, and we also needed to tell the station supervisor that we are filming if we filmed in any other station. Luckily they didn't make us delete any footage and we got off and continued filming our station scenes and we were allowed to as we told them what we were doing.
Those train scenes took a very long time but after we did that we headed off to Osterley station and got off the trains, meaning our train scenes were done and dusted.
Once we got out we made our way to the closest park which was relatively close so it didn't take too much time. We then filmed a lot of walking scenes there while also trying to use as many camera shots that we could. It took a very long time and the group were getting a little bit bored as so far all we had really done were basic shots. As it was effecting all of us we decided to have a break and think about what we were going to do next. In that time I went to my house and recharged one of the camera's battery since I lived quite close. To make sure it didn't overcharge I had to stay at my house and let my group continue filming without me.
A short while later I got a call and was told to come back with the battery to Osterley station. On my way there I saw someone in a bush with a camera and as I got closer I found out that it was one of my group members. I was then told that our whole plan had been changed and was then briefed. I was sort of confused to be honest, but I just got on with things so no time was wasted. After that we spent a while in the subway and then decided to go to Hounslow East station by bus to film a few more things before we filmed our night scenes. Eventually we did film them, and they were very quick so we got something to eat after that, which was also done to kill some time as we were waiting for nightfall. After that the group and I split as that was all I could do for the day and it was getting very dark. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to stay out too late before going out I asked my group if I could do most of the filming in the day to cover for my absence later on, and they agreed.
Overall the day was a good one, but we did encounter quite a few problems along the way, but that made the whole experience what it was and it would have been incomplete otherwise. We didn't get all the filming done that day though as some things like the waking up scene needed a lot of light to be done, and the school scene couldn't be done either as we filmed in the holidays. However we did eventually film them as soon as we could.

Choosing the Characters

In thriller films the plots vary quite some bit, and we chose to go for the gritty, social-realistic sort of film, and our plan was for it to fall into the category of an action-thriller, as that is what most people voted for in the questionnaire as their favourite. Since that was what we are doing I did a little research to see what kind of actors get casted and see if it would help us to choose our characters. I didn't research woman characters since most people said they preferred a male as the lead in thriller movies. Here are some of the main characters from some recent action-thriller films:

Name: Liam Neeson

Movie: Taken (2008)

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/

Name: Dwayne Johnson

Movie: Faster (2010)

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1433108/








Name: Tom Cruise

Movie: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229238/

Name: Christian Bale

Movie: The Dark Knight (2008)

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/

Name: Leonardo DiCaprio

Movie: Inception (2010)

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/






From these movies mentioned I also found pictures of the villains to help us decide who to cast. Here are the pictures:

Taken:

Faster:

 

Mission Impossible:

The Dark Knight:

Inception:

From this research I thought it would be best to have an innocent looking person as our main character and decided to cast Amritpal Singh Dhaliwal, who is a sixteen year old boy that goes to our school. I think this is a good choice as he can look innocent and evil at different times, and as he gets kidnapped we want the audience to question him and think about what he could have done.

We chose Amir Jaffer (who is in our group) as the villain. Since the kidnapper's face isn't going to be shown a lot we thought it would be best for a person in our group to be the villain, and we chose Amir mainly based on the fact that he looks quite similar. I think we casted good people, and I hope that the actual video will go as planned.

Main Stoyboard

Since last time Amir and I made the initial storyboards we decided to give the task of making the actual fully developed storyboard ideas to Balkaran and Tanveer. Together they made a four page storyboard outlining the main things that happen in our opening, and I must say that they did a very good job with it. However although we do have the storyboard and it does help us when filming, we may decide while filming that if we change some things it might get better, and this is a process that happens with real movies as well. Nonetheless I am happy with the main plot and I think we have used our reseach and put it into our ideas so far. The storyboard is below:

Finalised Idea

This was the final Prezi I made that outline the groups ideas and shows how we have done things because of our research, which was mainly from our questionnaires. We started out with our own separate ideas and then merged them into one, and now we finally have a whole idea with input from each individual in our group. Also, we decided to name it 'Incognito', and this was my idea which was inspired by games and how they say you have to become that to avoid the police and to get away. The Prezi is below:

Final Idea on Prezi

Dark Knight Analysis

The opening sequence of the Dark Knight is a very fast paced one. Before the actual movie starts the titles show up and these are blue with a black background, and this relates to the dark tone that the movie has. The movie itself starts with an establishing shot and zoom for about 15 to 20 seconds and then the action starts and doesn’t stop until about five minutes into the movie. This is very common for thriller films as the action all starts off at the beginning and then slowly gets into the main storyline. A movie that did this was Inception, which is another thriller directed by Christopher Nolan as well.
The camera angles are mainly neutral (medium shots and two shots) apart from the beginning, where bird’s eye view was used to show the criminals going from one building to the other. I think the reason the director chose to closely follow the crime is to make it seem as if the audience were actually there. It also is more interesting than it would be if it was one long shot, and thrillers do need to be interesting and exciting. It also has to be a little mysterious, and this was achieved by the way the audience was shown the Joker (villain) in the opening but it wasn’t revealed to be him until a little later on. This keeps the audience engaged and makes them wonder whom the person in the mask was.

The editing in the opening is very quick, but only after a long establishing shot. There is a lot of action happening in the opening, so it only makes sense to try and show it all together by editing it in that way as well. The music is also gradually getting more and more intense to make the audience get more involved and it also helps create the atmosphere. Both the editing and non-diegetic sound effectively creates suspense and tension, which is a common convention known to be linked with thrillers as from this the audience are able to establish the genre of the media text. This is the directors attempt to influence the audiences ideas and expectations for the rest of the film.

Sound also plays a major part in movies, and especially thrillers as it need to get the audience’s heart pumping. This is done by the music slowly getting louder and more intense, as if to make the audience know something bad is about to happen. An example of this is when the banker pulls out his shotgun and shoots one of the criminals, meaning that the whole operation is at risk. This is actually a good thing but also very dramatic, and the music ties in perfectly with it. Also, the diegetic sounds of gun shots and police sirens at the end help the audience understand that the movie they are watching is indeed a thriller and not any other genre.

The colours in this are quite dark at the start, but only for the characters as the actual scenes are quite bright due to it taking place in broad daylight. This could have been done to add to the experience as it could make the audience more gripped into the action as such a robbery would usually take place at night, but then that would be quite generic. Also, the fact that the Joker had a clown face that was white could be seen as an ironic thing, as clowns are usually jolly and fun. Also, it concealed the robbers’ identities, so it makes it more dramatic. And another thing that makes it more dramatic are the weapons that are used. The robbers all have guns and that is the first thing that is seen in the movie (a robber shooting the glass window). This is all used to make the villains more threatening and the average people more vulnerable.

There is a lot of use of special effects in this particular opening sequence compared to most other movies. It jumps straight into the action and this required a lot of gun shots as it is a bank being robbed. This sets the tone for pretty much the whole movie and I think that it is almost a subtle portrayal of what will eventually happen in the movie. Most, if not all thriller films start off with a lot of action and then slowly develop into the actual storyline, and the Dark Knight follows this convention.

Here is the opening of the Dark Knight:

Analysing Thriller Openings

Part of the research that is required before we start filming our main task is a brainstorm on a couple of thriller movies. This is good as once we have analysed a few opening sequences we will understand thriller movie conventions better and hopefully use them in our own production.

 

After analysing both films it seems that there is a high contrast between the two. Both do start off gradually, but Inception has more conventions of a typical thriller, so that is probably the better one to read up on since we are only doing the opening sequence and we need to make sure it looks like a thriller. However after this I still need to do research on another movie, and that requires an essay.

Developed Ideas

As our ideas are more developed than they were originally I made another Prezi with the basic storyline that our group came up with on it. It outlines what we are going to try and achieve in the final product and how we are trying to almost make it generic. The Prezi is below:

Developed Ideas on Prezi

Initial Ideas

To prepare for the task I made a brainstorm which I then remade on Prezi, and it is here:

I think this task was useful as it made me think about the main task and how my group and I will have to get through the idea of it being a thriller within the opening sequence. The fact that it is roughly two to three minutes long is helpful as there isn't too much filming or editing that will have to be done if it were longer. However this works both ways as if it was longer than it would be easier to show that it was a thriller.

Storyboard

For the main task a storyboard will have to be made, and to prepare for this my group was told to make a storyboard with our initial ideas of the plot of our thriller movie. We have discussed as a group on what we want our opening to be like, but we haven't really thought about the type of shots that will be used, and I think this was a good way to get us on our way there.
We came up with the idea of half of the group, including myself, making our own storyboards with a slightly different idea but the basic concept being the same. As this was mainly a learning experience we didn't spend too long on this but we hope that the actual storyboard will be much better. The storyboards are below:

My storyboard:

Amir's storyboard:

Questionnaire Analysis

This is the analysis I did after doing the questionnaire. I think it was a good thing for us all to make questionnaires as it gives us a broader opinion, although it was still mainly opinions from people around our age. Nonetheless my group and I will try our best to use this information and base our thriller opening on it.
Presentation1

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Questionnaire

After doing the research I made the questionnaire. I kept it at one A4 page to avoid it being too long, as that was frequently mentioned in the research I did. I believe it was done quite well, but could be slightly better. The benefit of having a group here means that we have a variety of different questions and all the research adds up and will hopefully help us in the production of the final task. The questionnaire is below:

Types of Questions

Along with doing research online, we also did research in class. Mostly everybody in the class hadn't made a questionnaire before so we had to firstly get to know what goes into it. Below is the paper that shows what we learned:

The research outlines the types of questions that can be given in a questionnaire, along with some useful tips as well. I hope this will really help me in the actual task itself as the questionnaire is a very important thing as it gets other peoples views other than my groups.

Questionnaire Preparation

Before starting the questionnaire, I thought it would be a good idea to do some research on the subject. I found a website that helps with the process of making a questionnare. Here is the link: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/skills/Advice/Questionnaire%20design.pdf. The website is actually quite useful, and I will be sure to use it when making the actual questionnaire. I also found two other websites that list the advantages and disadvantages of a questionnaire, and the link for those are http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/ltdi/cookbook/info_questionnaires/index.html and http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20and%20Managing%20Information%20Leicester/page_51.htm. I want to make sure that I have done enough research as the results of the questionnaire could greatly effect the outcome of the main task-the actual thriller opening sequence. So far I believe everything has gone as planned, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Garageband Experiment 2

To try and get to grips with GarageBand and the way it works I decided to make another song, but this time for there to be more layers and it didn't have to relate to the theme. I made it sound like a song that would be heard at an arcade, but it was really unintentional as it was just me trying out everything out on GarageBand. I really do think that this experiment did help as I now think it would be easier to make music and now I know where everything is and this will hopefully be very useful when I am making the music for the final task. Also, to upload it to YouTube I had to use iMovie, which was also good as it is the programme that will be used to edit our opening sequence. I think this task will really help in the long run.

Garageband Experiment

This wasn’t much of a task as it was a learning experience for all of us. I personally have used Garageband before this task, but that was quite some time ago, so this was a good experience and it helped a lot. Garageband is a very good application for making music as it is so simple and easy to use, and it also comes with very good loops. However it is easy to get taken away by its capabilities and add many loops together without a purpose (making it with no genre).

Song: 

The soundtrack I made wasn’t as good as it could have been, but I’m hoping that the actual one my group uses will be much better, and I also hope we all have an input. And planning ahead, I think we should use tempos instead of time, as then it will be consistently improving, rather than it popping up randomly.

Preliminary Task Storyline

The storyline outlining what will happen, who will do what, and what camera shot will be used is below:


[ADAM]
1. Person A walks through corridor (Establishing Shot)
2. Person A will put their hand on door handle to open the door (Close-up)


[TANVEER]
3. Person A enters the room and closes the door (Medium Shot)
4. Person A walks through room and sits down (Pan)


[BALKARAN]
5. Person A has a conversation with Person B (Two shot, Shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot)


[AMIR]
6. Person A leaves Person B and goes to close the door (Tracking Shot)
7. Person A pulls out scissors from their pocket (Extreme Close-up)


Although this is just the preliminary task I believe that everything that happens should be outlined and understood so it will be much easier for the group when it comes to the main task. Obviously this script and storyline is very basic, but hopefully we will all get better as time goes by with the help of our research.

Preliminary Task

The preliminary task was a good way to start out the project as it helps put things into perspective for the main task. We had to first start out by planning out each shot for the video and then give people a certain position and tell them what to do. The main task will be similar to this but slightly harder as it can’t be as bad as this, to be quite honest. This task was just done to make sure everyone got a basic idea of what it was like to film something, and it was also done to make sure we understood all the rules so we wouldn’t make any mistakes during filming.

Overall the task could have been done a lot better, but this was just a little preparation, so it was okay. I have links to both the unedited product as well as the final product. Both had no music, as we still haven’t learnt how to use Garageband yet, although I have used it a few times before. Also, this wasn’t as good as it could have been because we didn’t even have a storyboard, and that means that there was no real plot. Obviously in the main task we will have to do a lot more work than this, and I hope that this will lead to a much better product overall.

Video 1:

Video 2:

Preliminary Task Preparation

The first thing we have to do was the preliminary task. This doesn't necessarily have to be related to our theme, but as a group we have decided to have a link to it, just to try and get the hang of things. The basic idea is just to see if we understand the concepts that we had to (like the 180° rule). Obviously before we do the actual task we needed to plan it all out, and here is our plan:

Action	Shot type	Camera
Door closed	Establishing shot	Adam
Hand on door handle	Close shot	Adam
Door opens from other side	Medium shot	Tanveer
Person walks to other person and sits	Pan shot	Tanveer
Conversation, images switches from person to person	Shot/reverse shot -  over the shoulder shot.	Balkaran
Person goes to door and closes it	Tracking shot	Amir
Person pulls scissors out of his pocket	Match on action	Amir
Walks toward person	Medium shot	Amir

It is quite evenly split between the four in our group, but the reason Balkaran only has one thing to do is due to the fact that the conversation is probably going to be the longest part, so it will add up to the same amount of time on the camera as the rest of us. That is also the same thing with Amir. His shots are relatively small, so we decided to give him three to make it add up. I think this is quite a good plan, however for the main task it will have much more detail and a storyboard.

Preliminary Task Research

Before even doing the preliminary task I decided to do a little research. On the internet I found a slideshow with the following presentation:

It is a slideshow that shows the conventions of thriller films, which is actually quite helpful. Considering we are doing only the first few minutes of a thriller, it is very important to get through the idea of what it is immediately as there isn't too much time. So far all four of us have some simple ideas, but in the coming weeks we will watch some thriller films openings and do research, and we will hopefully have a vague idea of what we want to do.

Match on Action

Match on action is a cut in film editing using a different shot, also meaning a different composition, and both clips match, often helping to establish a strong continuity of action and linking the two shots metaphorically. Without it the audience would be confused as to what is going on as it would hardly make any sense.

    

                                          

Shot Reverse Shot

Shot reverse shot is a technique where character A is shown looking at character B (that is off-screen), and then the character B is shown looking back at the character A. The diagram below shows the technical aspect of it, and the one below that shows it actually being used in a film.

The 180° Rule

The 180° rule is the teaching that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. The camera must not pass over the imaginary line in between unless a pan is used or else it may leave the audience confused. The diagram below shows this: